One Last Kindness
by HecateA
Summary: Salazar Slytherin had made his peace long ago that he would never see Helga Hufflepuff again. He never expected to be brought back to her side, let alone her death bed, and he especially did not anticipate the emissary that would bring him there. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **If you've ready _The Marks Left Behind _or _Found Everywhere _(not that you need to), you'll be more than familiar with my "the Heir of Slytherin is the child of Hufflepuff" conspiracy theory. Enjoy this latest reiteration of it now that I am free from school until my last exam rolls around!

**Hogwarts: **Assignment #10, Rituals and Ceremonial Magic Task #1, Write a fic featuring a parent and their daughter.

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Warnings: **Character passing away; estranged parent/child relationship

* * *

**One Last Kindness **

Salazar had presumed that he was past the age where great stories and adventures would start by sitting in a tavern, but the person who swung into the seat before him and interrupted his reading sat with such determination that he knew that she was up to something.

"Are you Salazar Slytherin?" she asked, though other than the formulation of her statement, there was nothing to it like a question.

"I am not in the business of giving my name to the first stranger who asks, especially not when I am busy," he said pointedly.

"I can relate," the young woman said, untucking her black curls from the inside of her traveling cloak. "My name is Ana Mariska Florence Zaida of Hufflepuff. I am your heir."

Salazar couldn't quite explain all the jumps and skipped steps and malfunctions of his mind and heart and stomach at those words. _My name is Ana Mariska Florence Zaida of Hufflepuff. I am your heir. _

But quickly he realized how well the pieces fit together. He recognized his little sister's name, nestled in what this stranger had just offered like a passport. Salazar had spoken to so few about Zaida, and had spoken of her so little since leaving… suffice it to say, it was not a name that just anybody would know or throw around. And then there was 'Florence.' One of Helga's favourite places in the world… To crown this growing pile of what he could only call evidence, the constellations of freckles on her face felt uncannily familiar.

"Who are you?" he asked again.

"I was born a few months after you left the castle," Ana Mariska Florence Zaida of Hufflepuff told him. She readjusted herself in her seat, sending the golden bangles on her wrist in a fit of clinking. "You never knew about me, though you should know now that I go by 'Ana,' simply. My mother, Helga, raised me with my aunt and uncle."

Something boiled in the pit of Salazar's stomach.

"And none of them thought to tell me?" he asked.

"I suppose they were trying to spare everyone a scenario where you'd have a reason to return to Hogwarts," the girl said. "It's still open and active, by the way. It's doing very well."

"I know," Salazar said. "I've been keeping an eye on things. But not well enough, it would seem."

"My mother is a fiercely protective and very careful woman," she said. "I suppose she took her precautions."

"I recall, yes," Salazar said. "I…"

"Please don't be angry with her and don't make this about yourself," the girl said. "At least not until I'm done speaking. See, I'm not here for me, or even for you. I've heard many, many things about you, none of which I particularly care about. No offence, I'm sure there's something interesting and good about you, if Mama loved you like she did. But I'm not one to cry about spilt milk, and that isn't what I'm here for either."

"I can respect that," he said. He shut the book before him. "Have you come to see what you've inherited, then?"

She shook her head and when she spoke next it was in perfect Parseltongue. "I know what I need to know, and what I know because of how my life has gone is that even if I don't need you, I think my mother might."

* * *

It was summer, which meant that the castle was empty and the country surrounding it was at its lushest, greenest, most beautiful stage. Salazar had missed the Highlands, though he did not relish this return.

Godric Gryffindor was an old man, and Rowena Ravenclaw seemed to have aged twice as rapidly. They stood in the castle's doorway waiting for him, though they must know from the fact that Ana had brought him in and through the wards so painlessly that he was there as a friend.

Godric leaned on a quarterstaff, something must have happened to his leg. He wore his red Masai blanket thrown over his shoulders and seemed bundled up against a cold Salazar didn't feel. Rowena wasn't quite dressed in any regalia, but the dentalium earrings she wore and the eagle perched on her shoulder told him that she'd prepared to see him again.

"I will be in and then back out," Salazar told the two of them. That was all to say. "I have no interest in anything else."

"Good," Godric said.

"How is she?" Ana asked him.

"Excited to see you again," Godric said, reaching out to squeeze her arm. The casual, familial, everyday gesture did something to Salazar's stomach. That was the kind of contact and relationship he never would have with this daughter of his.

But Ana had made the gravity of the situation very clear and her priorities at this time even clearer. As such, he let her lead the way.

The whims of the changing staircases made sense to him as he followed her and some of the portraits looked familiar and even seemed to recognize him. There was something encouraging and reassuring in this; that the place he had poured so much of himself in still knew him after all this time and that he knew it in turn.

Helga's chambers had not moved since the castle's construction—they were connected to the kitchen by secret passages and a spiral stairwell where she sometimes shed her shoes after a long day, but high enough in the castle that they overlooked the greenhouses and the edges of the Forbidden Forest. Years ago, she had been delighted by the herds of unicorns that wandered out of the woods at dawn to eat fruits off her apple orchards. He wondered if they still did that.

"She spent quite a bit of time in the Infirmary," Ana said. "She refused to go anywhere else, see any other Healer, and kept teaching on her good days. I've mostly taken over Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology, Potions, sometimes… but lately, the only real thing there is to do is to keep her comfortable."

Salazar nodded. He wasn't quite sure what to call the emotions coursing through him, but he could feel them buzzing just underneath his skin.

Ana knocked on the door, a series of long and short knocks that were probably one of the secret codes that Helga loved to invent. A kindly House Elf that Salazar didn't know opened the door and smiled when he saw Ana, letting them in and excusing himself.

"Mama, it's me," Ana said. "I have someone here for you."

Salazar heard her voice, heard Helga for the first time in over twenty years, call back in Romani so quick he couldn't pick out any of the words she'd once taught him. His heart skipped a beat.

Ana replied quickly and then he heard the coughing. Ana disappeared into the chambers, and once he was alone Salazar found himself wincing at the violence of the fit.

Ana reappeared soon after and waved him forward before dashing off again, leaving him to follow. She was sitting on the bed, holding her mother's hands, when Salazar entered. Helga's eyes looked too tired to react to the sight of him, but she did smile.

Helga Hufflepuff was gravely ill. That much was clear. Her previously thick and tightly curled hair had greyed gracefully, but it seemed thinner now—as did Helga herself, who had always been soft and round and well-built. Crow's feet and accordion lines marked her face after decades of laughing and smiling, but her skin was pale and clammy.

"Salazar," she said when she saw him.

"Helga," he said. He stepped towards her and hesitated, but Ana forfeited her spot to him and slunk away, her mission accomplished.

Salazar took her spot and took Helga's hands in his. They were cold, despite the abundance of orange and yellow blankets under which she was tucked.

"You're ill," he said.

"It happens," Helga said. Her voice was meek and breathier than Salazar would have liked. "I have been lucky to have the time to put my affairs in order."

"I did not know I counted," Salazar said.

"Neither did I. Ana made that decision for us," Helga said. When she said it, her face fell and a flash of anxiety illuminated those amber eyes of hers.

"She's sharp," Salazar commented.

Helga managed a laugh. "As a knife. And she's beautiful. And cunning and kind and generous and crafty and honest and attuned to the world and…"

She coughed and the way her body shook with the spasms of her lungs scared Salazar.

"If I had known…" Salazar said.

"Don't," Helga said. "Like I said, I am finishing my business, not opening new one. Don't tell me things I already know."

Salazar nodded. "I won't pretend to understand what you did and why, but I am happy to see you again."

Helga smiled. Her eyelids were falling.

"Me too. I have had so many adventures without you, more than I ever thought I would. So many adventures to tell you about…"

"As do I," Salazar said. "There is a whole world outside this castle, I wish you had seen it with me..."

"This castle is my world," Helga said. "Or rather it was. It satisfied me and left me with no dying wishes to fulfill."

"So you truly are dying, then?" Salazar said. His Healer's training and the years of research he'd compiled on medicine from around the world were itching to manifest themselves, to make themselves useful... "Is there perhaps…"

"No, there is not," Helga said. She took a deep breath and squeezed his hand. "Let's pretend we're sitting by a campfire—like when we met, when we still lived and lingered in the woods, and we would tell stories…"

"The best stories," Salazar recalled.

"I can nearly hear the sparks crackling," Helga smiled. Another coughing fit broke her peace, but she smiled again once it was done. "Tell me a story. Ana, come sit and listen to our stories…"

Ana obliged her mother and perched on the foot of her bed, looking over the scene with a face Salazar couldn't quite read.

"You will have to give me a place to start," Salazar said.

"Tell me a story with a happy ending, a blue sky, a stroke of good luck, and something orange in it," she said.

"That is quite a tall order," he noted.

"What?" she said. "Do you think I would let you off easy instead of picking up where we left off?"

"No, no," Salazar said. "And don't you worry. I have just the tale for this…"

* * *

It took three days for Helga Hufflepuff to die, and Salazar was acutely aware that once she was gone his welcome to the castle and his purpose for being there in the first place were gone. Still; he had to talk to Ana one last time.

She was standing on the Astronomy tower, looking down at the castle's grounds. To Salazar's shock and amusement, he felt winded after climbing the staircase up. The last twenty-one years had aged him so…

Ana leaned on the rail, wearing the simple tunic, breeches, and boots that she'd gone out to the greenhouses in a few hours earlier. A pair of gardening gloves were tucked in her pocket and she wore a toolbelt loaded with spades and shovels and other small tools.

Salazar went to stand by her.

"I will leave soon," he said.

"I know," Ana said. She turned back to him. "Like I said when I found you in Switzerland; I don't need anything from you. I'm not particularly interested in knowing you either. The ship has sailed or whatever it is they say."

"I am aware," Salazar said. And, quite frankly, he had just gotten here—to this place of fatherhood and responsibility and legacy. He wouldn't be twisting the girl's arm to partake anytime soon, especially not with the hole Helga had left in her heart left to fill. That would be daunting for anyone, much less Salazar. "But still, I should give you something—at least something in this lifetime. There's a chamber…"

"To hell with your chamber," Ana snapped. "I know about it, it's a legend. It hasn't been found, in case you're wondering, even if they've all looked and looked and looked. For all my childhood they looked, trying to pretend that they weren't afraid of what you might have done or that my father might be a monster. I have no interest in seeking it out."

"You may not need it, but one day someone will," Salazar said in Parseltongue. "The Chamber holds more secrets than any of the legends could even conjure, it has more uses than what they whisper about. Your mother—she gave you a name I would recognize in case you ever needed to find me. She built you a failsafe, and I am giving you one now. So pass it on. You asked me to show your mother one last kindness, and now I propose that you do me this one since we will quite probably never see each other again."

Ana considered this for a second, looking him over. For the first time in his life, Salazar felt—not just saw but _felt—_what everybody around him had meant when they said that his gaze could pick apart and burn.

"The chamber," Ana said. "Where is it?"

* * *

**Stacked with: **MC4A; Shipping War; Winter Bingo; Hogwarts

**Individual Challenge(s): **Hola, Bonjour, Jambo; Misunderstood; Black Ribbon; Black Ribbon Redux; Slytherin MC; Hufflepuff MC; Seeds; Olden Times (Y); Old Shoes; Summer Vacation; Tissue Warning; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Family); Themes & Things B (Reunion); Themes & Things C (Blanket); Themes & Things E (Jewelry); Ethnic & Present (Y); Advice from the Mug; Old Flames; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!

**Word Count: **2235

* * *

_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Helga Hufflepuff and Salazar Slytherin

**List (Prompt): **Winter Big List (Legacy)

* * *

_**Fall Bingo**_

**Space (prompt): **4D (Kindness)


End file.
